In my quest for new challenges, I became a homebrewer! I started with the local Brew on Premises, but when they closed down, I got myself everything I need at home to whip up a batch of beer. But even more fun than making beer is designing the label to stick on the bottle! Sure beats collecting stamps!
Okay, my homebrew labels have been pushed down the page by my writing about beer in Chicago. Give me more time to square this page away, and you'll see them again!

Now you can get my artwork on goodies!Proceeds go directlyto benefit... well, me!

Dec 12, 2010

12 Days of Christmas: Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro, Fountainhead, Bar on Buena. The three bars will be pouring over 20 Christmas beer selections. 12 Beers of Christmas, Flossmoor Station Restaurant & Brewery For 12 days straight, Flossmoor Station Brewery will release a one-of-a-kind, completely unique beer especially for that day. 12 stouts of Christmas: Brixie's Beer Bar, Brookfield. 12 different stouts on tap until the end of the year.

Dec 1, 2010

Nice little piece from Boing Boing reminiscing about the mystique of Coors in the 1970s. Bonus: It's written by a woman after she tried to explain the plot of Smokey and the Bandit to her husband. As little as I care for Coors or S&tB, I gotta admire a gal like that! But not as much as the one I'm married, with our shared love of Stooges, Svengoolie, and MST3K.

Binny's Beverage Depot's Assistant Beer Buyer, Kyle Fornek, posted on the retailer's web site that they will be getting a small shipment of Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Sink the Bismarck! from BrewDog, based near Aberdeen, northern Scotland.

Nov 10, 2010

Here's the analogy: Darkness is to Minnesota as Dark Lord is to Indiana. Barrels of Surly Darkness have been appearing on draft accounts in Chicago's finer beer bars tonight (Nov. 9). Here are the bars currently reporting Darkness on tap…

Oct 25, 2010

The weekend schedule is pretty slim once I separate out the Halloween events, isn't it? Some of these may have "Halloween" in the title, but seem to involve no costumes, no late hours, just a few hours with some good beers. Click on, click on…

Oct 24, 2010

Sure, every place open at night is offering “Halloween parties.” But do we want to end up hanging out at some sports bar where the “Halloween special” is a bucket of Lites and a cardboard cutout of Elvira. I didn’t think so. These places are our regularly listed brewpubs and good beer bars that have something Halloween themed going on. Doin’ what I can to make All Hallows’ Eve a bit less spooky! This listing will be updated as Halloween approaches, so check back soon!

Oct 15, 2010

Haymarket Pub & Brewery, the new brewpub, restaurant and performance space venture in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood, has announced that the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB, the successor to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), has granted them their Federal Brewer's License. This means, of course, they can begin producing beer for public sale and consumption.

Once again, life is made better by science. I have known of homebrewers who tried out "prison hooch" methods, so this is actually a step up. I have also pondered a method for a truly limited batch beer: "One Beer, One Bottle." Said bottle to be artfully decorated so I could truly claim the value of the beer is in its bottle, and that I won't claim the contents are drinkable, so it could be sold on the E-bay.

Just one question for the author: How do you gather and prepare the seaweed?

Oct 6, 2010

Fall is upon us, and so is FoBAB.Tickets are on sale now for the eighth annual Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer, which will be held Saturday, November 6 in Chicago. The event is organized by the Illinois Craft Brewing Guild, the professional organization of craft brewers and beer professionals in the Land of Lincoln.

Rodney Kibzey of suburban Lombard has won his second LongShot with a Black IPA. His homebrew recipe will be “sized up” and brewed for the LongShot 2011 six-pack along with a Belgian-style IPA by Richard Roper of Georgia, and the Sam Adams Employee winner, “Honey Bee’s Lavender Wheat,” by Caitlin DeClercq.

Rodney previously won the 2007 LongShot (for production in 2008) with a Weizenbock

Sep 15, 2010

There are now more breweries and brewpubs in the planning stages in the Chicago area than we can easily keep track of. One of these is Finch's Beer, in works to open next year in Chicago. Principals Benjamin and Paul Finch have announced one key addition to their operation this month:Read on…

Aug 10, 2010

Aug 9, 2010

Friday, August 13: Tentative opening for HaymarketHaymarket Pub & Brewery, 737 W. Randolph St., Chicago (312) 638-0700Haymarket is the latest brewpub project to open in the Windy City. Brewmaster is Pete Crowley, previously in charge of the great brews at Rock Bottom Chicago. A post on their Facebook account says, "The brewery is estimated to arrive in Chicago on Friday the 13th!" Be sure to check it out. More…

Jun 14, 2010

Is Tour de Fat a Burning Man for bicyclists, or clever beer marketing?

And why do we say we’re “driving” a car, but “riding” a bike? “Riding” implies no effort on your part in making the thing move.

Let’s work it out Saturday, June 26, when new Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat makes its third annual stop in Chicago, at Palmer Square Park (Palmer St [2200 N] between Kedzie and Sacramento). This is the 11th season for the Ft. Collins, CO-based brewer’s “celebration of all things bicycle.”

May 31, 2010

May 26, 2010

I got the story on my Examiner page today. May not mean much to drinkers of better beer. In an ideal world, the new owner would spin off all the regional brands Pabst gobbled up to individual brewers in the cities they first came from. And the beer fairies would bring me a pint at work when I snapped my fingers.

May 17, 2010

Interesting note about attempts to grow hops in NC, a bit south of the plants' usual "comfort zone," but being in the mountain areas may help it work.Another attempt to find a crop to replace tobacco in the area, could be good for prices. Part of the reason for the many new American wines out there is that many former tobacco farms turned to grapes.Brewers have high hopes for N.C. hops - Food - NewsObserver.com

May 11, 2010

May 10, 2010

Among the flora in our recently purchased house's lot, we have found mulberry trees, only one of which bore fruit last year, and spearmint. Now we find we have a good-sized crop of rhubarb. Well, none of us really cares for rhubarb, but when times are tight, it's foolish to ignore the bounty in one's back yard. I've already made a mead with last year's mulberries that still needs to be bottled. I've tried the spearmint in a mint julep, but appearntly rather than just mashing the leaves in a glass of whiskey, I needed to boil them into a simple syrup.

So now I'm looking at things to do with rhubarb. There are the old pies and jellies, but if no one else will like it, I'm left with brewing something using rhubarb. I've seen some beer recipes that use only a few stalks per five gallons for a wheat-fruit ale or a Berliner weisse (sour beer). But if I'm to use more of what Nature has given to me, I need to check out some Mead or Rhubarb wines: